


The Little Mermaid ain't Who You Think

by RedHeadedWoman



Series: 52 Stories in 52 Weeks [3]
Category: Disney - Fandom, The Little Mermaid - Fandom
Genre: 52 in 52, Ariel is Better Than You, Ariel is a Badass, F/M, Gen, The little mermaid - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-24
Updated: 2016-01-24
Packaged: 2018-05-15 22:44:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,506
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5803207
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RedHeadedWoman/pseuds/RedHeadedWoman
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Imagine Ariel, sixteen years old and a princess. Imagine an Ariel who, surrounded by her sisters and over-protective father, feels smothered and under-valued. Beauty and a voice can only get you so far.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Little Mermaid ain't Who You Think

**Author's Note:**

> I've taken elements from both the Disney movie and the original story from Hans Christian Anderson and some myths about mermaids and mixed them all together.
> 
> The prompt for this week was a retelling of a fairytale and The Little Mermaid is my favourite so I ran with it!

Imagine Ariel, sixteen years old and a princess. Imagine an Ariel who, surrounded by her sisters and over-protective father, feels smothered and under-valued. Beauty and a voice can only get you so far.

An Ariel who never knew her mother, her grandmother, who has no interest in royal life or a life above the sea where humans walk and devastate the planet. Ariel, who loves to sing and loves her family and friends with a fierce, unwavering loyalty, has no interest in a world out of the water. Nor does she have an interest in exploring a world she’s never known and a world where humans have forgotten her kind exist.

Ariel and her sisters scavenged shipwrecks. They watched great ships and smaller fishing boats from beneath the storms above threw them around as though they weighed nothing. They would watch the ships sink below the waves, bodies floating on the surface before slowly sinking to the ocean floor.

While her sisters searched for trinkets and pretty things, Ariel found swords and cannonballs, trunks filled with gold and silver and colourful gems. A marble statue sunk one day, it’s likeness that of a beautiful boy. She kept the statue in her garden, surrounded by red flowers which grew over the statue. Ariel would lay watching the statue, wondering who the boy had been and what his world was like.

On her sixteenth birthday, she’s allowed to rise to the surface to see this other world. Her sister’s have all seen it on their sixteenth birthday. They came back with stories of moonlight and stars, the twinkling lights of towns, of icebergs and beautiful sunsets, green hills and palaces, towns and villages, the sound of carriages and horses. They told Ariel of storms and lightening, of children playing in the shallows. They tell her of the beauty of this other world but as they grow and mature and learn, they rarely go back and their excitement dims. The walking world becomes just another place where they can go. A place they do not belong and never will. They are more at home in the sea, away from sunlight and clouds, and thunder that shakes their bones and make them dive for the ocean depths.

On her birthday, Ariel’s sisters take the place of her grandmother, adorning her tail with glittering oysters, to show her high status. The oysters hurt where they grip her but she keeps quiet. Her gentle sister’s manage the pain and so will she. She rises to the surface, wary and curious. It’s the first time she has breached the waves, the first time she has breathed air instead of water. She bobs in the waves, feeling the sea breeze on her face, her hair drying for the first time.

The moon shines above her, cool and bright. Stars dot the sky in their millions. Silvery clouds pass overhead, throwing shadows onto the ocean floor. The wind smells different than the ocean, tastes different. The current eventually drags her close to a ship. Music floats down from the deck, fast and loud and happy. She can hear laughter and loud conversations.

The stories her father told her of humans come back to her now. Stories of humans killing whales for the blubber, the fat. Of humans fighting wars on the ocean, their ships crashing into each other and being torn apart. Of mermaids becoming caught up in these battles, dashed against rocks, flattened between ships, or burning when the wooden ships are set ablaze. Stories of mermaids, her kin, her subjects, being captured by humans millennia ago. Taken from their homes and everything they’ve ever known for what? To be gawked at, to be poked and prodded and researched. Never to be seen again.

Ariel would lift herself out of the water to look through a porthole at humans for the first time. They are much like mermaids, Ariel thinks. The top half is the same. A head, two arms. Two legs. Ariel would look between the men and their legs and her own tail. A powerful muscle capable of propelling her through rough seas and strong enough to be used as a weapon if needed. She would not have a sleek, light green tail. Her tail would be thick and dark, strong and powerful.

The storm would come and wreck the ship. Humans would be thrown overboard and a beautiful boy would catch her attention. Ariel saves the boy, dragging him along behind her to the shore. She would stay with him till morning, when the sun peeks over the horizon and paints the world in pinks and yellows. Her gaze would be on the horizon, watching the colour of the world change. The sea is no longer black but blue. The rocks are grey and the sand bright yellow. She wouldn’t notice the human waking. What interest would she have in this boy, this human, when there is the sun throwing its light upon a new world?

The boy would take her attention. His black hair, and ripped clothes, his two legs. Ariel would stay quiet as he looks her over. From her dry hair, to the shells covering her chest, to her tail, curled on the warming sand, oysters glinting and biting. He would be awestruck and Ariel would revel in the attention. She is a princess used to being looked at, fawned over, but the boy is different. He stares at her as though she is something to be treasured, instead of the youngest daughter of the Sea King.

‘Eric’, he would tell her. ‘My name is Eric.’

‘Ariel,’ she offers, knowing this is the right response. The boy, Eric, smiles. Ariel is not afraid of him and there is no sheepdog to scare her away. Instead, their meeting would be interrupted by an aide searching for the lost prince. Ariel sinks back into the ocean, while the boy is distracted. She watches as the aide finds the prince and disregards his story, taking him back to his palace.

Ariel goes back to hers where she tells her sisters the story of the storm and the boy. Her sisters listen to her, curious and concerned in equal measure. The walking world is not for them and the love of a human prince is not meant for them.

Ariel, her mind changed about this new world, remained curious and returned to the world above, swimming close to the prince’s palace and watching him. She watched him in his lessons, with his friends, and his dog. Eric never sees her watching. Ariel is careful to stay away from the shallows. Her sisters are right after all. This world is not meant for her.

One day, some time after saving the prince, Ariel comes across the Sea Witch’s lair. Ursula is known to Ariel, this witch who tried to overthrow her father and was thrown from Atlantis to haunt the deep waters. This witch who Ariel had been told of greets her warmly and invites her into her home. Ariel, polite and kind, accepts the invitation. She knows of the Witch’s reputation, of what she does to those who break their promises to her, to those who wrong her.

‘Tell me, princess,’ Ursula says to her, ‘Tell me of your father, your sisters, yourself.’

Ariel, lost as to what to tell her, speaks of the prince she rescued and this world she doesn’t understand. The Sea Witch laughs at her, at her naivete. Ariel begs her for knowledge of this world. The Sea Witch offers her legs so she may walk amongst the humans and learn their ways, meet her prince again, and perhaps live happily?

Ariel, wiser than we know, doesn’t believe the Witch, her promises and her bargains. Her voice for some legs? To leave her father and her sisters and the only place she truly belongs? The only place she knows?

Ariel escapes the Witch and seeks her father and his kind words. He holds her close as she tells him of the Witch and of the prince and of the pain of the damned oysters. Triton, a king and a father, eases the oysters off her tail. This daughter of his who chafes against protocol and dreams of a life spent in open waters. Ariel’s tail bleeds where the oysters gripped her and she cries. She cries for her lost mother and grandmother, for her prince who she thought she could love, for the life she cannot leave yet wants to.

Triton, seeing her pain and her sorrow, kisses her forehead and gives her a sword. ‘A year, daughter. Leave the palace and your sisters and me for one year. Return on your seventeenth birthday and tell me of your wishes then.’

Ariel agrees and leaves her home. She takes the sword from her father and a red flower from her garden. It will bloom for eight months before it begins to wilt and Ariel will know to return home.

She leaves Atlantis to explore. She travels the oceans, from the warmth of the Pacific and the Indian, to the freeze of the Southern and Arctic oceans. She encounters animals she’s never seen before, brightly coloured clownfish and massive elephant seals. Mermaids with no sense of decorum who go bare chested and with vicious blades that hang by their sides.

Mermaids who spend half their time lying on rocks and remote beaches, basking in the sun. Mermaids who swim beneath frozen sheets of ice, who ride waves, and who live in the utter blackness of the deepest oceans. She swims down the Mariana Trench until she can’t see, following strange fish with lights on their heads.

Ariel watches humans too. Men and women and children playing on the shore and in shallow waters. People on ships travelling to far off continents for new starts, for their businesses, for their punishments. Ariel watches and she learns. She learns that humans aren’t very good swimmers, that they fight too much, and die too easily. She learns some of their languages, their beliefs, their ways of life. She hears their music, their singing, their animals. She learns how they wage war on land and on sea.

Ariel helps them where she can. Pulls drowning men from their sinking ships, rips the chains that hold them in place, and drag them to shore. Some still don’t make it but many more do. Ariel allows them to see her, knowing these poor souls won’t be believed. They they’re stories will be ignored or disregarded. She doesn’t know what happens to them next and does not care. She leaves them on the shore and swims away from them, leaving them to their fate.

Her red flower stays with her through her travels until it finally begins to wilt. She takes her time heading home, there’s no reason to rush. There is still more to the oceans then she could see in a lifetime.

Her father wraps her in a hug when she returns home, wiser and kinder for her travels. She returns home with scars on her tail from the oysters, long since abandoned, and from far deadlier, and far meaner beings.

Her sisters greet her with stories of their own lives, their marriages and their children. Ariel loves her nieces and nephews. She loves them all dearly but after a month at home Ariel longs for open spaces again. To be able to swim where she pleases without aides and well-wishers chasing after her.

So she leaves again, promising her father she will return every year on her birthday. So, Ariel travels the oceans, returning to Atlantis once a year. This is an Ariel who still collects things. Broken crockery and cutlery (using their actual names), shells and bits of driftwood. She gathers up bits and pieces from the shore and from shipwrecks. Nothing special or important, just whatever takes her fancy. She carries these bits back to Atlantis every year and shows them to her father, her sisters, her nieces and nephews.

Ten years after she first left Atlantis, there is a storm that wrecks another ship. Ariel watches from below as the ship begins to burn, changing the colour of the water around her. Men jump from the ship and climb into lifeboats. Even beneath the waves she can hear their muffled screaming. Bodies sink around her. It’s too late to save them and she will not push them to shore. They belong to the sea now. A part of her will mourn them for the families they leave behind.

One body that sinks past her is familiar. The boy she met years before. Ariel watches him pass her and something makes her follow him down into the depths. 

His heart still beats.

Ariel flashes her tail and dives after him, catching his arms, and begins dragging him to the surface, intent to save him again. A falling log stops her and she sees his face properly for the first time.

He will not survive if she takes him to the surface. There is a large, bleeding wound on his temple. His heart beat is already slowing and he will not survive.

It’s only now that Ariel remembers a story she once heard, a long time ago. That some merfolk have a gift to give a human. A kiss to save his life. Ariel doesn’t know if she has the gift or if it will be a curse to the man, Eric, but she tries.

A simple kiss, their lips pressed together. Ariel holds him beneath the rolling waves and the burning ship and the men calling for their prince. She breathes life back into him as she drags him deeper into the ocean.

Eric wakes in her arms, beneath the waves and everything he knew, looking towards the gleaming city of Atlantis. He will never grow a tail and the wound on his head will never fully heal but he will live.

Ariel has seen enough of the world. Her father is old, her sisters do not want to rule and none of their husbands would be good enough. Triton would never ask his daughter to take on the burden but he doesn’t have to. She offers and he accepts.

Ariel will rule Atlantis for many years to come with Eric by her side, offering love and advice. He was raised to be a king and gladly helps his rescuer, this mermaid he loves.

Sometimes they will grow tired of the water, or of Atlantis, so they will travel the oceans for a time. Eric will walk on sand and Ariel will lie on a rock. They love and live for the rest of their many days, never tiring of each other’s company.

Ariel was never a girl who desired to have legs and live like a human. She never wanted to risk it all for three days in the sun and sand for a boy. 

What queen would give her life for a boy and a world she doesn’t know?

 

**Author's Note:**

> I have absolutely no idea what I was doing when I wrote this but I kinda like, even if it didn't end quite how I was expecting.


End file.
